The Day We Found the Universe (48 page)

122 demonstrated for the first time: Fernie (1969), p. 708.

122 “I had not thought of making the very pretty use”: Smith (1982), p. 72.

122 concluded that they were giant stars: Russell (1913).

122 arriving at 80,000 lightyears: Smith (1982), p. 72.

123 “improved and extended”: Shapley (1918a), p. 108.

123 Shapley tried mightily to check with Leavitt on this question: Shapley was still concerned late in his project. “I notice that a great many of the hundreds of [variables in the Small Magellanic Cloud] are fainter. Does Miss Leavitt know if they have shorter periods[?] … The matter is of much importance, as you know, because of the relation between periods and brightness,” he wrote Pickering in 1917. (HUA, Shapley to Pickering, August 27, 1917.) Leavitt was then away on an extended vacation and could not provide an immediate answer.

123 “Routine stuff”: HUA, Russell to Shapley, November 26, 1920.

123 “This proposition scarcely needs proof”: Shapley (1914), p. 449.

123 “The whole line of reasoning … was brilliant”: Sandage (2004), p. 303.

124 “definite conclusions from these data cannot be safely made”: Bailey (1919), p. 250.

124 With the assistance of Edison Hoge, he took some three hundred photographs: Shapley (1918b), p. 156.

124 “the work on clusters goes on monotonously”: Gingerich (1975), p. 346.

124 Hale had convinced him to stay at his job: HUA, Shapley to Russell, July 22, 1918.

125 With the first hint of dawn in the east … settle any squabbles: Sandage (2004), pp. 181, 195.

125 “The most unwarranted fun of all comes from
bugs
”: HUA, Shapley to Oliver D. Kellogg, December 31, 1918.

125 “Another method is to read your thermometer”: Shapley (1969), p. 66.

125 His findings were published in scientific journals: For example, see H. Shapley (1924), pp. 436–39.

125 further rest and relaxation: HUA, Shapley to Russell, September 3, 1917.

125 some well-known star clusters
within
the Milky Way were at least 50,000 lightyears distant: Smith (2006), p. 319.

126 “This is a peculiar universe”: HUA, Shapley to Russell, October 31, 1917.

126 “the minimum distance of the Andromeda Nebula”: Shapley (1917b), p. 216.

127 “like a winding spring”: Slipher (1917a), p. 62.

127 “V. M. does a little, Hale a little more, and I much”: HUA, Shapley to Russell, September 3, 1917.

127 “inclined to believe in the reality of the [spirals'] internal proper motions”: HUA, Russell to Shapley, November 8, 1917.

127 “word was law”: Payne-Gaposchkin (1984), p. 177.

127 “the general plan of the sidereal system … bearing on the structure of the universe”: Shapley (1918a), p. 92.

128 “striking”: Shapley (1918b), p. 168.

128 “impossible to count every star shown”: Melotte (1915): 168.

128 around 20,000 parsecs … away: Shapley (1919d), p. 313.

128 In 1909 the Swedish astronomer Karl Bohlin even dared to suggest that the center of the galaxy was in that direction: K. Bohlin,
Kungliga Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens handlingar
43:10 (1909).

128 couldn't wait that long to spread the news: It should be noted that Shapley sketched out his results earlier in smaller publications, but the full details were presented in both the
Astrophysical Journal
and
Contributions from the Mount Wilson Observatory
. 128 “now, with startling suddenness and definiteness”: HUA, Shapley to Eddington, January 8, 1918.

129 “You may have been completely prepared for the result”: Ibid.

129 “While I cannot pretend to have anticipated the view of the stellar system”: HUA, Eddington to Shapley, February 25, 1918.

129 “May I impose upon your time for a little while”: HP, Shapley to Hale, January 19, 1918.

129 “Start a messenger on a light-wave down the main highway from the center”: Ibid.

130 “the nearby spirals to either side much as the prow of a moving boat cuts through the waves”: Shapley (1920), p. 100.

130 “I believe the evidence is quite against the island universe theory of spirals”: HUA, Shapley to MacPherson, May 6, 1919.

130 “The observational problems opened up are unlimited”: HP, Shapley to Hale, January 19, 1918.

131 “The solar system is off center and consequently man is too”: Shapley (1969), pp. 59–60.

131 “this marks an epoch in the history of astronomy”: HUA, Eddington to Shapley, October 24, 1918.

131 “simply amazing”: Russell (1918), p. 412.

131 “certainly changing our ideas of the universe at a great rate”: HUA, Jeans to Shapley, April 6, 1919.

131 “always admired the way in which Shapley finished this whole problem”: Baade (1963), p. 9.

131 “super–Milky Way”: “Universe Multiplied a Thousand Times by Harvard Astronomer's Calculations,”
New York Times
, May 31, 1921, p. 1.

132 “Personally I am glad to see man sink into such physical nothingness”: Ibid.

132 says Shapley in the article: Shapley wrote Henry Norris Russell two weeks later that the
Times'
interview with him was actually a “fake … evidently a rehash of last year's news about the Hale lecture [Great Debate]. It was served up new because of my shift East, of which they had just heard.” HUA, Shapley to Russell, June 16, 1921.

132 Earth, proclaimed the headline, was now a “Rube”:
Chicago Daily Tribune
, May 31, 1921, p. 1.

132 “You have struck a trail of great promise…. I think you are right in making daring hypotheses”: HP, Hale to Shapley, March 14, 1918.

132 Though not possessing a good telescope, he organized a massive effort to measure the positions of hundreds of thousands of stars on plates taken at other observatories, partially with the help of state prisoners: Hetherington (1990b), p. 28.

132 roughly 30,000 lightyears wide and 4,000 lightyears thick: The full dimensions in Kapteyn's 1920 model were officially 60,000 lightyears wide and 7,800 lightyears thick, but the stellar distributions out in those more distant regions were extremely low, making a precise border difficult to define. See Paul (1993), p. 155. Many references cite the 30,000-light-year width.

133 difficult for Kapteyn and his colleagues: Smith (1982), p. 69.

133 “building from above, while we are up from below”: Gingerich (2000), p. 201.

133 “carnival barker's certainty of truth”: Sandage (2004), p. 288.

133 quick to jump to conclusions based on meager observations: AIP, interview of Harry Plaskett by David DeVorkin on March 29, 1978.

133 “two different breeds of cats”: Smith (1982), p. 124.

133 “has never given the credit where it belongs”: MWDF, Adams to Hale, December 10, 1917.

133 “I have never seen a quicker mind”: Whitney (1971), p. 218.

134 Once Lindblad worked out the theory, Oort rounded up the evidence: Smith (1982), p. 157.

134 “With the plan of the sidereal system here outlined”: Shapley (1918d), p. 53.

134 “We may compare our galactic system to a continent”: MacPherson (1919), p. 334.

9. He Surely Looks Like the Fourth Dimension!

135 “the discovery of a universal formal principle”: Schilpp (1949), p. 53.

136 “It does not seem that something like that can exist!”: Fölsing (1997), p. 46.

136 “Newton, forgive me”: Schilpp (1949), p. 31.

137 “In all my life I have labored not nearly as hard”: Pais (1982), p. 216.

137 “I was beside myself with ecstasy for days”: Hoffmann (1972), p. 125.

138 “Spacetime tells mass how to move”: Ciufolini and Wheeler (1995), p. 13.

138 “When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a curved branch”: Isaacson (2007), p. 196.

139 “Whether the theory ultimately proves to be correct or not”: Douglas (1957), p. 39.

140 “Newton's plant, which had outgrown its pot, and transplanted it to a more open field”: Ibid., p. 18.

140 “people seem to forget that I am an astronomer”: Ibid., p. 115.

140 “he couldn't talk at all”: AIP, interview of Hermann Bondi by David DeVorkin on March 20, 1978.

140 declared valuable to the “national interest”: Douglas (1957), p. 92.

141 Einstein was the first to do this: Einstein was actually prompted to do this after a discussion of general relativity with de Sitter in the fall of 1916. Kragh (2007), p. 131.

141 “Cosmological Considerations Arising from the General Theory of Relativity”: Einstein (1917).

141 “I compare space to a cloth”: Kahn and Kahn (1975), p. 452.

141 “It exposes me to the danger of being confined to a madhouse”: Isaacson (2007), p. 252.

142 “as required by the fact of the small velocities of the stars”: Translated in Lorentz, Einstein, Minkowski, and Weyl (1923), p. 188.

142 discussions in fact that inspired Einstein to conceive his spherical universe: Kerszberg (1989), pp. 99, 172.

143 “the frequency of light-vibrations diminishes”: De Sitter (1917), p. 26.

143 “amongst the most distant objects we know”: Ibid., p. 27.

143 “Einstein's universe contains matter but no motion”: Eddington (1933), p. 46.

143 “does not make sense to me”: Kahn and Kahn (1975), p. 453.

144 “systematically”: De Sitter (1917), p. 28.

145 “it will always remain beyond my grasp”: Smith (1982), p. 173.

145 he had early on suggested a specific test: Einstein (1911).

146 “This should serve for an ample verification”: Dyson (1917), p. 447.

146 “What will it mean … if we get double the Einstein deflection?”: Douglas (1957), p. 40.

146 “We are conscious only of the weird half-light of the landscape”: Eddington (1920), p. 115.

147 “Cottingham, you won't have to go home alone”: Douglas (1957), p. 40.

147 “One thing is certain, and the rest debate”: Ibid., p. 44.

147 These were the results that Eddington and Dyson stressed in their reports: See Dyson, Eddington, and Davidson (1920).

147 “LIGHTS ALL ASKEW IN THE HEAVENS”:
New York Times
, November 10, 1919, p. 17.

147 Eddington admitted he was unscientifically rooting for Einstein: Eddington (1920), p. 116.

148 “I hoped it would not be true”: Douglas (1957), p. 44.

148 “We met in quick succession Their Eminences”: LOA, Curtis Papers, Curtis to Campbell, May 11, 1921.

148 “He surely looks like the fourth dimension!” Ibid.

148 “bombshell … which quite blew up the meeting of the Academy”: HUA, Shapley to Russell, May 4, 1925.

148 “I am really getting pretty tired of the fundamentalist's attitude of the opponents of relativity”: HUA, Russell to Shapley, May 21, 1925.

10. Go at Each Other “Hammer and Tongs”

149 The year 1920 was one of achievements: My thanks to Virginia Trimble for pointing out some of these interesting facts in a review of the debate written for its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1995. See Trimble (1995) and also Streissguth (2001), p. 42.

150 “homeric fight”: De Sitter (1932), p. 86.

150 “done to death”: NAS, Abbot to Hale, January 3, 1920.

150 “I pray to God that the progress of science will send relativity to some region of space beyond the fourth dimension”: HP, Abbot to Hale, January 20, 1920.

150 Abbot wondered … island-universe theory: Hoskin (1976a), p. 169; Smith (1983), p. 28; NAS, Abbot to Hale, January 3, 1920.

150 “daring innovator …”; “… and more often concluded ‘not proven’ than ‘not so’”: Struve (1960), p. 398.

151 “Perhaps Harvard is amateurish, compared with Mount Wilson”: HUA, Shapley to Russell, February 12, 1919.

151 worried how he would come across: Shapley was increasingly uncomfortable at Mount Wilson, where he didn't get along with deputy director Walter Adams. Adams strongly criticized Shapley's model of the galaxy when it first came out, questioning the way Shapley cut corners in reaching his conclusions. Shapley blamed Adams's disapproval on “professional jealousies.” (See HUA, Director's Correspondence, Seth Nicholson to Shapley, November 6, 1921.)

151 Curtis was known to be a dynamic lecturer; Shapley feared he would look bad by comparison: The role of the Harvard appointment on Shapley's performance at the debate was first discussed by British historian Michael Hoskin. Historic accounts of the Great Debate previous to Hoskin were based solely on the printed publication of the debate. Hoskin was the first to unearth archival materials on both the session and its background. See Hoskin (1976a).